Thankfully, while much of the Australian political debate revolves around the economic risks of doing something, business long ago realised that the cost of stuffing around will be much higher. The UN race-to-zero campaign has 4400 businesses including banks, insurance companies and asset managers already committed, and the number is growing by the day. Today at the UNGA (UN General Assembly) I urged leaders to get on with the job, before it’s too late.” A 1.5-degree future is the only liveable future for humanity. “Climate change is truly an existential crisis that threatens not only us, but succeeding generations,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said this week. World carrying AustraliaĪfter Antarctica, we are already the driest continent on earth and can therefore least afford warming.
If every country in the world did what we are doing, that target would evaporate. After a couple of decades of obfuscating, this is already close to opportunity lost and will require a dramatic escalation of effort to remain achievable. The central stated aim of COP26 in Glasgow over the next few days is to keep 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming within reach. Only with bold, ambitious 2030 targets, and new, concrete policies will we reverse this global emergency. Their actions - or inactions - will show their seriousness about addressing the climate crisis. In four days, world leaders will be put to the test at #COP26. Meanwhile, we are stuck, with bonus nationalist rhetoric about the so-called Uniquely Australian Plan, which was cynically transactional in the making, contingent on a huge, vaguely framed pile of money for National Party seats and the return of a climate sceptic and coal advocate to cabinet. The UK is also aiming for the phasing out of unabated coal power by the 2030s, along with the rapid acceleration of renewable technology, and the end of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, rather than taking energetic and urgent action, Australia’s Plan lazily falls back on projections that emissions will fall by up to 35 per cent by 2030, exceeding the federal target of 26 to 28 per cent that was set in 2015 via ‘momentum’.Įxceeding the target relies largely on what state governments are already doing, rather than the federal government Plan. While much of the rest of the world tries, with targets and deeply costed and mandated strategies, we have no new Plan for 2030, having been dragged kicking and screaming to reach even a woolly 2050 net-zero promise.īy way of comparison, the UK has decarbonised its economy faster than any country in the G7 in the last 20 years and, since 1990, has grown its economy by 78 per cent while reducing carbon emissions by 44 per cent.Īs the leader of the forthcoming COP26, the UK has a plan to reduce its 1990 emission levels by 78 per cent by 2030. It’s depressing at best to consider the fact that instead of being the courageous young nation leading others into a new energy economy, with all our natural, financial, and human assets, that we are a global passenger. Certainly we’ve, at times, shown ourselves to be fearful and inward looking.īut right now, with most Australians willing to show up and be the former, we’re being held back.
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